Thursday, April 26th, 2007
The Feisty Fawn Upgrade Misadventure
I’ve missed the routine weekly post as I have been trying to “unf**k” my ubuntu installations (home and work) as I colourfully put it to Neil one of my co-workers and resident IT guys. I guess this is more an apology than anything but here’s a brief rundown of what the current status is.
Ubuntu Feisty Fawn is released!
As most (K)Ubuntu fans may know, on April 19, Feisty Fawn was released and after reading many peoples reviews, I thought “awesome! I’m so there downloading the upgrade”. It was easy to upgrade from “Dapper Drake” to “Edgy eft”, then over to “kubuntu”, I thought it would be just as easy to upgrade to “Feisty Fawn”. WRONG!
Botched Installation
To cut a long story short, it was far from awesome, it wasn’t easy. I had issues both at my office workstation and still having issues with my home office worstation.
It all started when the upgrade stalled at key points here at work. After a few attempts at rescuing my old installation, I took the final step of switching over by removing Windows XP from my system and installing a fresh install of kubuntu 7.04 feisty fawn on my primary drive.
It was pain free. “Feisty Fawn” recognised my hardware and I managed to install all the programs I required so that I could get back to PHP Web Development (I’ll be making a post about this later).
k3b issues rescued only by old faithful Windows
At home, I downloaded an iso of kubuntu 7.04 and burnt myself a cd (for some reason, k3b did not burn the image properly and after wasting 3 blank cds I was down to my last. I headed over to my laptop and loaded up windows, downloaded the iso (again) and burnt it onto my last blank cd using the trusty “burn at once” windows application - it worked flawlessly.
Back to my desktop. The upgrade went nicely, but either in the latest version of the kernel or the upgrade itself did not recognise my wireless network card (Belkin F5D6001 - PCI). So while I can connect with “Dapper Drake” and “Edgy Eft” versions of (k)Ubuntu, I was not able to do so with “Feisty Fawn”.
It got to the point where I was actually loading up the live CD and searching for solutions.
ndiswrapper
The most common solution was using the ndiswrapper. But there was a problem with that also. I had no internet access with kubuntu so I could not use aptitude to install the packages required for me - F**K! THIS $417!!!
- REBOOT!
- back to live CD
- Pluck “stairway to heaven” on my guitar (the song every aspiring guitarist would know)
- Download ndiswrapper-utils:
- Mount the primary drive where I had kubuntu installed.
- Copy ndiswrapper-utls deb package to that drive and reboot again.
- Tried to run the installation, but then it informs me that it requires ndiswrapper-common (ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!)
Finally I caved and decided to install Dapper Drake onto a secondary drive. At least if I need to have internet access I can just reboot and load up Dapper Drake from a HD (which loads way faster than the live cd).
After the installation, I logged onto Dapper Drake, downloaded and copied the ndiswrapper-common package over to the drive where kubuntu was installed and rebooted again.
Back to kubuntu.I install ndiswrapper-utils and ndiswrapper-common, copied the bel6001.* files from a windows driver installation cd that came when I bought this piece of $417 a couple of years ago and rebooted.
shell$ sudo ndiswrapper -m
shell$ sudo ndiswrapper -ma
EURIKA! it recognises the card. Awesome! But now it can’t connect to my router… “F*** THIS $417!”
On my last legs, I disable ipv6, rebooted no effect. I had a moment of implosive silence then I knocked my lcd monitor with my knuckles (a restrained punch), but it sent it falling down flat on the desk.
At this point, my patience is gone and my judgement clouded, I decided to call it a night and instead stare at the idiot box (tv) watching people from big brother talk about “how cool it is to be living at the big brother house”.
So, in conclusion, I would like to apologise for neglecting the blog. stay tuned, I’m still here. Once I’ve resolved the networking issues at home, everything will be back to routine.
Regards,
R. Villar David
on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 12:43 pm:
posts like these freak me out and makes me want to stick to good ol’ Windows XP! hehehe
on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 1:45 pm:
(haha) don’t let it scare you :)
There are many others who have successfully installed it without a hitch. It was just my luck to have a “not so supported” wireless card at home.
The upgrade stalling at my office was the most frustrating part of it. Contrary to the Upgrade, which was a major screw up, the fresh install was actually a breeze.
In addition, I’ve been using Kubuntu Feisty Fawn at my workstation for a few days now without any quirks or mishaps whatsoever even with the 3d Desktop enabled. - From my limited experience, it’s pretty flawless when you get it going… otherwise you’ll read more about it from here if it screws up. :P